EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR PEARLER

This schooner was a pearler, and they had the location of a bed of shell.

I am Cuthbert Ellison, the pearler, your husband, and I wish to be no other.

As soon as they separated, I accosted the Pearler, and offered my services.

Cadell, who was a great friend of Jensen, was himself a pearler.

At last, on the sea-front again, he chanced upon a pearler who had met him heading round the hill-side.

Although I describe him as a Dutch pearler I am somewhat uncertain as to his exact nationality.

The ship, which I concluded was a pearler, kept steadily on her way, and eventually disappeared below the horizon.

After a while the Pearler seemed to recollect business elsewhere; he drank up his liquor, and went out, leaving us together.

WORD ORIGIN

mid-13c., from Old French perle (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin perla (mid-13c.), of unknown origin. Perhaps from Vulgar Latin *pernula, diminutive of Latin perna, which in Sicily meant "pearl," earlier "sea-mussel," literally "ham, haunch, gammon," so called for the shape of the mollusk shells.

Other theories connect it with the root of pear, also somehow based on shape, or Latin pilula "globule," with dissimilation. The usual Latin word for "pearl" was margarita (see margarite).

For pearls before swine, see swine. Pearl Harbor translates Hawaiian Wai Momi, literally "pearl waters," so named for the pearl oysters found there; transferred sense of "effective sudden attack" is attested from 1942 (in reference to Dec. 7, 1941).